The draw of Wiener schnitzel and spiced wine was too much for team Austro Germany and they needed a holiday, from the holiday, so back to the Germany and it´s suburb they went! Our motorbikes had been left in our really nice little guest house in Addis Ababa, along with all our motor biking gear. I was very excited as the relay was passed from Marc and Suz to Jo, who was coming out for a three week mission around Ethiopia with me. I picked Jo up from the airport and we headed back to our guest house. We chilled out and spent a few days hanging out, eating and drinking until Marc and Suzi flew home. After a few lazy days we booked onto the luxury “Salam” bus north to the lake side town of Bhar Dhir. For once the bus actually lived up to the hype, having a toilet and serving snacks for free. On the bus we met Michael the straight talking and funny Londoner. He´s a big character and we ended up crossing paths and travelling together a lot. We arrived in the lakeside town of Bhar Dhir and stayed in our weathered hotel for a couple days. Whilst there we took a mini bus and checked out the Blue Nile falls as they leave the huge Lake Tana. They were very impressive but a lot of the sting has been taken away with the development of the new hydro electricity plant.After an interesting mini bus ride on our private bus to the mountain town of Gondor, or so we were told! A pretty standard Ethiopian promise of a private bus, (paying twice the price!) which turned out to be a very public bus stacked to the gunnels with chat (a local narcotic), kids and whatever else could be squeezed in. We chilled out here for a day, checking out the 17th century castle or mainly sleeping in the walled garden.

The next leg was what we had been waiting for, trekking in the Simien mountains which reach a height of 4700m. We set off with our new Californian buddies (Blake and Lynette) on a pretty cosy and dusty ride to the starting point and the park headquarter in Debark. Once we arrived we organised a scout, some mules and a cook with the minimum of fuss. Of course in true Ethiopian style there was a catch with the huge fee to get transport in and out of the park. With some hard bargaining we managed an ok deal but it was still a lot. All in all, the trek was super cheap, costing 100 pounds for 5 days including superb food. Jo who was after a tan got her wish and a bit more! My bargain Sudanese sun cream turned out to be glorified moisturiser. With the altitude, the fierce sun blistered my fragile Nordic nose and turned the young Jo black. The landscape was bizarre with us following a huge escarpment with a path weaving along the edge with constant sheer 1,000f drops, a base jumper´s paradise. The top of the escarpment was a high plateau with rolling hills not dissimilar to the mountains of mid Wales. On these high plains massive troops of grazing baboons sat eating with their red chest bums and there crazy Afro´s. We spend Christmas Eve on the mountain and I was spoilt rotten, having my first stocking ages J So I got lots of chocolate, a santa hat, Jelly beans and a very comprehensive wilderness first aid book which came in very useful the very next day helping a young girl with a very bad skin condition. After our very interesting Christmas day spent in the back of a pickup and a local bus that was a moving sauna packed wall to wall with quite smelly locals.

Back in Gondor we had booked some really cheap internals flights as travel within Ethiopia can be very time consuming as apart from the main Chinese built highways, the roads are shocking! So we headed to the Mekele in the NE of the country on our lovely new Ethiopian airline plane. We met up with our good friend Michael and Yohanis the South African who was on the case sorting out prices for a trip to the infamous Danakil depression. Next day we were off on a big adventure in a convoy of 10 Toyota Land Cruisers to one of the most inhospitable places on earth. The road winded its way down and down through dramatic folded volcanic landscape eventually arriving at the lowest point on the African continent (-116m) and the village with the hottest average temperature in the world. The Danakil is a place of quite a few records and is often like another planet with only the “Afar” tribe living there, who are renowned for their ferocious and fearless ways. On the way down the winding road with switch back after switch back, we passed hundreds of camels laden with salt blocks cut from the vast salt planes way below.

Next day we went on a magical mystery tour stopping in at the local sights. The first of which was a volcano shaped mountain topped with a moonscape of sulphurous formations spewing hot water from deep below. All around was the hissing of water and alien like sculptures all in very un-natural colours of vivid yellows, toxic greens and brilliant white. After a short drive we drove to a salt cave and a walk through some very delicate looking salt formations. We then drove to a huge hole in the desert floor about 100m wide which was full of bubbling orange brown water. All around were open holes of vary sizes all bubbling away like a pan on the stove. Last visit of the day was to the vast salt planes to see where the local “Afar” eke out a living chopping blocks of salt like they have been doing for many centuries to sell in the local markets at Mekele. After another decidedly average carbohydrate loaded meal we settled into our beds lined up outside looking up at the huge desert skies counting shooting stars as we slowly drifted to sleep.

Next morning we had an 8 hour drive through one of the worst roads (or a path through the wilderness) in the world. We shot off at break neck speed through deep powdery sand, dry river beds, open planes but mainly sand that enveloped everything in our 20 year old vehicle. When we stopped our vehicle reminded me of that mates house were you wipe your feet on the way out! We were covered in a thick layer of dust, others had the luck of a new air-conditioned vehicle but Jo, Michael and I definitely were rocking the desert look. The last part of the drive was on pure rock from the previous eruptions of the volcano we would spend New Year’s Eve on. This is one of the only permanent lava pooled craters in the world and has been in a permanent state of eruption for the last 100 years. So after crawling and bumping our way over the sharp path along the volcanic rock our convoy arrived at the base camp from where we would walk to the summit in the night. After another stodge fest dinner we all left for the 3 hour walk to the summit. We took our time and meandered our way up and when we finally crested the rim we could see the lava creating an orange glow, occasionally lighting up the sky looking like some kind of missile attack! Eager to get up close we scrambled down the rim onto the old lava crater in which the much smaller active crater sits in. The surface was brittle and crunchy underfoot, like a cross between shiny coal and wind affected hard snow. The surface was in layers reminding me of chocolate ripples on a cake and occasionally a foot would fall through the void to the next layer down. All around you could feel the heat emanating from deep below. When we got to the edge of the actual lava pool I was instantly speechless with some people talking to me and I was like a kid glued to the TV, in one ear and out of the other. The crater was about 200m wide with a bubbling epicentre that moved around and would occasionally erupt into and angry column of spewing lava, belching out a cloud of noxious gas that burned your eyes and lungs if you got too close. Michael was walking around like a shell shocked soldier cracking me and Jo up, calling it the devils eye! It really was almost overwhelming to see such awesome, raw power and I´ve never seen anything that has made me feel like that before. We settled in and got used to our surrounding sitting back from the crater on the warm ground chugging local wine as we counted the New Year in, one to remember that is for sure. Next morning we had a miserable hung over walk down and an epic drive back to Mekele.

We spent our last day in the Tigre area around Mekele checking out some of the infamous rock hewn churches. The most interesting one involved some pretty tricky rock climbing moves and a final shuffle along a small ledge with the exposure of a 200m drop! The time Jo and I had, had flown by and it was time for her to leave so we flew back to Addis. Our Danakil cooks hygiene practices had left us very, very ill indeed. Our last romantic evening was spent tag teaming the toilet with a very unpleasant chorus being played! Poor old Jo got on the plane and feeling terrible and only just made it back home in one piece. That night team Austro/Germany arrived back and the mission south to the road from hell was on.